Introduction

This volume addresses the issue of gender and violence in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) with the aim of unpacking its overarching historical, cultural, religious, social, and political underpinnings. While gender-based violence is a universal phenomenon, it takes interesting nuances and wears multiple faces in this region where tradition, social norm, religion, war, and politics intermingle in a powerful and tantalizing space-based patriarchy. The theme of “gender and violence” is relatively new in the field of research; hence, scholarly literature on gender and violence in the MENA is both scarce and dispersed. This volume aims to fill a gap in this regard by assembling a number of chapters that deal with specific aspects of gender-based violence in this region.